Secret Baby Girl
by baby-kitsune9
Summary: Morgan had finally come to terms with his feelings for Garcia but before he could tell her, she killed herself. Now his world is thrown into chaos without his baby girl. However a mysterious young woman may know the reasons why Garcia died- Morgan/ OC
1. Chapter 1

The first time he saw her was at Garcia's apartment, while the coroner was loading his long time friend/crush's body into the back of the van. She was standing there among the onlookers gathered just on the other side of the yellow tape.

Blending in and yet standing out at the same time.

She was wearing an emerald green knit sweater and some black jeans with black soft leather small heeled boots. Her long mid back length black hair was pulled back into a twist at the back of her head and held in place by a black and green butterfly clip.

She was a _beautiful_ girl with her green eyes and smooth ivory skin and haunting features. She couldn't have been no older than sixteen or seventeen if he estimated right. And there was just something so strangely _familiar_ about her that it tugged at his mind, piercing through the veil of grief clouding his thoughts.

He caught Reid and Hotchner staring at the girl and frowning out of the corner of his eye and scowled and shifted from the leg he'd been standing on to the other in a subconscious effort to block her from their view. He didn't understand why, but for some reason he didn't want the others to see her. Didn't want them to approach or question her.

He felt that that was his job. His and his alone.

However fate apparently had other things in mind because one of the two men trying to load Garcia's lifeless body stumbled and fell, dropping his side of the gurney causing his partner to yelp and try to compensate as he yelled out for help. If they wound up dropping the body, now safely sealed in the black tarp like bag, any rips or tears in the bodybag could cantaminate any evidence Gacia's body held.

He, Prentiss and Rossi started to run over to help when the girl he'd noticed slipped under the yellow tape and ran up and grabbed the other side of the gurney and tried to hold it up yet somehow managed to get pinned under it and Garcia's two hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight before they could reach her.

He was the first to reach her side and glanced at her for a second as he carefully lifted the gurney and Garcia's body up off of her. He was about to ask her if she was hurt when Hotchner came walking up looking pissed and started to demand to know what the hell the guys from the coroners office were doing, dropping the body of their dead friend.

Morgan grasped one of the girl's upper arms and pulled her to her feet while tuning out the sound of Hotchners angry voice as he asked, "Hey, you okay?" She looked up at him with a slightly startled look on her face and he wondered if maybe being trapped under Garcia's body had rattled her a little bit.

Some people were just creeped out by dead things. Whether it was someone they once knew or just an random animal hit by a car. The specifics didn't matter.

She opened and closed her mouth a few times then cringed a little bit and finally nodded her head. _Well okay then._ Morgan thought as Hotchner came walking up and looked the girl over for a second before repeating Morgans question. The girl managed to answer him vocally this time before Hotchner pointed out that she should be behind the yellow tape.

Again the girl cringed a little bit and rasped, "Yeah... Sorry about that. I'll just go now." Hotchner nodded his head as she gently pulled her arm from Morgans grasp and gave them both an awkward smile before making her way back to the yellow tape and ducking under it.

Morgan was about to say something to his boss about being a dick to the kid, especially after what she had done to try and keep their evidence from being comprimised. However the sudden relaxed look on Hotchners face stopped him as he called out to Reid and ordered him to get the girls name and to find out where she lived.

When he later asked why Hotchner was already on the phone to a florist, deciding that since he may not see the girl again after questioning then the least he could do was send her some flowers and a 'thank you' card for keeping the bag Garcia was in from being ripped or torn.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day-

Hanna Penelope Poppy Garcia De'lane stayed up all night listening to the small tape recorder that she got from her mother several days before today when she'd gone to check on her. She hadn't believed that her mother had been planning to kill herself, yet seeing was believing.

And the moment her mother's body had been zipped into the black tarp like bodybag she'd felt as if something had just put a hole through her heart.

Everything that she'd thought of her biological mother previously- Every small moment they had shared as she was growing up..._all_ of it felt like some huge, painful joke.

Don't get her wrong, she'd known that Penelope Garcia was her mother since she was fifteen and had hacked into the sealed adoption records at St. Anna. One of the largest functioning orphanages in the city.

The place where Hanna had been taken when her teenage mother had given her up.

After that she had managed to hunt Penelope down and insert herself into her life as a neighborhood kid with too much time to kill. She had managed to coax Penelope into spending time with her, and getting to know her. Then about three years and eight months ago she had gone to visit Penelope and the woman had met her at the door wanting to know what she was doing inserting herself in her life.

The same life that she had wanted Hanna nowhere near. The two had had a long intense talk about _why_ Hanna shouldn't be close to her biological mother. Yet in the end Hanna had finally managed to get through to her mom that she didn't expect her to raise her. She didn't expect anything from her. No reasons. No _crap-I-forgot-your-_ _birthday_ presents.

She wanted nothing more than a little bit of her time...and to have someone to watch the latest monster movies with on Friday nights. Thats it. Hanna didn't dare ask for anything more from her mother. And in the end, though she had learned a great deal about Penelope Garcia, she _still_ felt cheated.

She sighed and flopped face down on her bed and groaned. God she was tired. She'd been listening to the tape over and over again plus hacking her mother's previous case files to see if she could find the reason she felt so spooked that she would feel the need to kill herself and leave a partially coherent message behind.

She clicked the tape recorder to stop her mothers babbling then rewound the tape so that she could listen to it again. She restarted the tape again from the beginning and started listening again.

_Hanna, baby if your listening to this then I'm dead and while I know that that is horribly unfair to you, imagine how I feel at the moment. I won't tell you that I'm sorry. Because simply saying I'm sorry wouldn't be enough to properly convey how badly I feel for pretty much up and abandoning you again. All I can say is that there_ _is a reason. _

_And I need you to beware the Boogyman. Because he's out there somewhere, watching, and waiting. He has a personal vendetta against me and my friends from work and- _Her mothers voice stopped for a moment as if she must have been grappling with something before she started speaking again, her voice shakey and barely above a whisper. _He's out there. Oh god he's out there and I just know that if I stay alive he'll somehow find you and hurt you. _

Penelopes voice stopped speaking again for a moment before she seemed to pull herself together enough to say. _The clues are in the old case files. I labeled them in code so that only you would know what you were looking at... I expect you to live through this and stay ten steps ahead of him. Because if I see you up here anytime soon I'm going to be soooo pissed. _

Hanna sighed and turned the tape off there since the message ended there anyways and was about to try getting some sleep when she heard her adopted mother Helen De'lane call out to her. "Hanna! Did you get into trouble with the police again?"

Hanna pushed herself upright on her bed and looked towards her door with a scowl on her face as she heard several car doors slam.

Why would her mother ask her that? She had promised after the last time (the time she'd been thirteen and had stolen a car and run over her adopted father, Jack because he'd been drinking and had beat the hell out of Helen) that she would never get into trouble with the police again.

And she had more or less, for better or worse, managed to keep her promise. But only because Jack had left Helen after Hanna had threatened to kill him if he ever laid his hands on her adopted mother again. "Hanna! Answer me!" Helen called as Hanna shot across her room to her computer and started to shut it down then stuffed the tape recorder inside one of her pillow cases and went into her closet and found the gun that she'd bought without Helen's knowledge just in case Jack ever decided to come back.

She pulled the small revolver out of the tin box and put a bullet in it, just in case as she called out. "Not to my knowledge!" She could hear the faint hum of voices coming from downstairs. Closing her eyes she went totally still and listened and was able to sort and identify several different voices as well as why their owners were at the house.

She could distinctly hear her name being said as well as the question, "Would you mind if we talked to her?"

Hanna's paranoia kicked in and she looked around her room in a panic as she heard the creaking of the stairs giving way under someone who weighed anywhere from one hundred and sixty to two hundred and forty. No fat. Just muscle.

_Shit-_ She had under one minute to disappear. She glanced towards the window and gulped a little bit. She hadn't snuck out since she was fourteen and even then she had always hated taking the window because of the twenty foot drop straight down. That and she had a really creepy looking old tree outside of her window that she couldn't use to climb down. The limbs simply wouldn't hold her weight anymore.

She heard footsteps outside of her bedroom and made a panicky strangled sound in the back of her throat and automatically went for the window and started to slip out when her bedroom door opened and one of the guys from yesterday, the six foot three mocha skinned guy, peered into her room cautiously. Before dark eyes locked on her semi escaping form hanging half in half out of the window and got an half frustrated half amused look on his handsome face.

"Hanna I take it?"

"Uh..." Hanna said unintelligibly as her face flushed all the way to the roots of her dark hair and got a doe caught in the headlights look a second before she lost her grip on the window sill and went tumbling to the ground below.


	3. Chapter 3

Morgan would admit to being surprised by the fact that the girl that had tried to protect Garcia's corpse; was also the person that he and the team had come to question. But what surprised him more was when the girl had locked eyes with him a second before losing her grip on the window sill and plummeting to the ground.

He'd noticed that the girl had that _unique_, odd shade of eye color that Garcia had had. Not quite a pale mint color, nor an emerald green but somehow a mix of the two that gave her eyes an enchanting, enthralling look that simply held one's attention whether you wanted them too or not. And then there were her facial features.

The shape of her face, her eyes, her nose- Hair color could be changed easily enough, but that was only if it hadn't been dyed, which made him wonder if the black hair was hereditary. But everything else- every other feature practically screamed, _'Garcia's blood kin'_ which was in itself _wierd_ considering that Garcia had lost her whole family before she was eighteen.

So how the girl could be kin to her he didn't know.

Just like he didn't know how he _knew_ the girl was Garcia's blood kin, and yet at the same time he did _know_.

In fact he was damned sure of it as he carried her back inside the house. She was semi conscious, her body a dead weight and so light, with a knot the size of a goose egg on the back of her head. Her breathing irregular from having her breath knocked out of her when she had fallen. Other than that she had no broken bones, no internal bleeding- no serious wounds at all. _Thank god._

He carried her past Reid who gave him a curious look as Hotchner walked up and gave him a funny look before frowning. "What happened?"

"She fell out of the window upstairs."

"Was she running?" Reid asked as he caught a slight look at her features and tilted his head.

"Didn't seem like it."

"Does she need an ambulance?" Hotchner asked, a scowl marring his face.

Derek shook his head and made his way over to the couch and laid her down on it. "Dunno. First lets see what happens when she wakes up." He said as he grasped her limp wrist in his hand and began to take her pulse as her mother walked into the room and nearly dropped the drinks that she'd offered to get for them.

"_Oh my god!_ Hanna!" She shrieked as the girl stirred slightly. She set the drinks down and started to move to see if her daughter was okay when Hotchner intervened.

"She's okay ma'am. She just fell."

"Fell from where? Don't tell me she tripped and fell down the stairs again?"

"This is a common occurance then?" Derek asked curiously as he looked away. Hanna's heart beat was strong and steady under his finger tips. Undoubtedly she'd be fine once she awoke, aside from the nasty headache that is.

"It didn't used to be. But Hanna suffered a severe head wound when she was twelve. Because of it she's a tad bit vertically challenged. I've seen her walking down the street and pick up her foot to take a step and fall either backwards or to the side."

"The wound must have affected her inner ear or one of her ear drums then." Reid said as Derek moved to stand up.

"If you don't mind my asking, how did she get such a wound?"

"My former husband..." Helen said hesitantly before continuing. "H-He used to abuse the both of us. But Hanna had it the worst because she was trying to protect me. He blamed her for things that were beyond anyone's control and beat her over and over again. Things got so bad that he used to creep into her room while he thought that she was sleeping with a gun in his hand..."

"Why didn't you report him?" Hotchner asked.

"Hanna did. It's part of the reason he beat her so badly when he caught her."

"Then why didn't you leave him?" Reid asked, his expression puzzled.

"I was scared to." Helen said softly, her eyes lowered in shame.

"Does he still stay here?" Derek asked, his tone dangerously low. If there was one thing that really pushed his buttons it was some asshole abusing helpless women and children.

"N-No. Hanna finally snapped one day after school when he hit me and got a knife and threatened to kill him. So he left." The three agents blinked and looked surprised. It was very uncommon for abuse victims to confront their abusers. Even more so if the one being abused was a girl, and a child.

In fact they could count on their fingers the number of cases that they had had before where such a thing had occured.

So to hear that a little kid had stared down a possibly violent end for herself and her mother was just downright-well for lack of a better word- _astonishing,_ to them. "Fascinating." Reid said almost excitedly, earning a funny look from both Hotchner and Derek, causing him to suddenly fall silent and look around awkwardly.

Helen smiled for the first time since they walked through her door. "Yes. I thought so too especially since Hanna was just fifteen at the time."

"She must have been very persuasive."

Helen giggled. "You have no idea what my little girl can do when she's upset. I swear she could wither steel with one of her glares." Derek looked down at the girl as his lips quirking slightly as he thought, _I bet. _


	4. Chapter 4

Helen was a charming woman for someone nearing her fifties, and also innocently informative about Hanna and her personality. All it took was an hour of stories about Hanna and Hotchner and the others already had her profiled. Surprisingly enough she was one of the few people that they had come across over the years that was what they termed as 'a silent guardian' or 'avenging angel'.

She was someone who didn't like intrusions. People who damaged and broke things were seen as a threat to her home and family and regarded as something that must be gotten rid of. And after being shown a copy of her Juvi record that Helen said Hanna kept for job interveiw purposes- she wasn't a violent person unless she deemed violence necessary.

Like in self defense or defense of friends or family. She was however _very good_ at hot wiring cars and hacking into computer systems. Which shocked and surprised the hell out of the agents for several reasons.

_It's no wonder she was at Garcia's yesterday. _Reid thought as he looked over at the girl. _She and Garcia must have found out about each other and started hanging out to keep Hanna out of trouble. Either that or she might have asked Hanna's help on some of our cases..._

Hotchner was starting to get a little bit agitated. _Did Garcia share case files with this kid? _If so then some of the cases they had solved might have been comprimised. Not only that but if Garcia hasd shared files with the kid then she now knew, and had seen more than she should have which meant that they should arrest her or something.

After all those case files were supposed to stay within the agency.

However more than anything he was worried. If it was true that the kid had been helping them solve cases- then it was entirely possible that Garcia exposed her to someone that they hadn't caught yet. He wasn't the only one that must be thinking along those lines, Derek had a look on his face that could turn a person's blood to ice and stop their heart too.

"Helen, did you or your daughter know a woman named Penelope Garcia?"

Helen got a thoughtful look on her face for a moment then brightened and started to speak when a forceful voice cut her off with a stern sounding, _"Mother!"_ Helen and everyone else looked towards Hanna as she sat up and gave them a dark look before saying to Helen in a softer tone. "Did you take your medicine earlier?"

Helen sat there for a moment blinking owlishly before gasping and jumping up. "No, I forgot!"

"Then go get the bottles and a glass of water so I can give you your medicine."

"Oh, okay but-" Helen looked at them and then back at her daughter as if to say, 'what about them?' causing Hanna to sigh. "I'd like to visit some more."

"Go get your pills and after you've taken them, you can visit a little bit longer." Hanna said. Derek, Reid and Hotchner waited until Helen was out of the room before one of them commented.

"I thought it was a little odd that she would give out so much information easily."

"What's wrong with her?" Reid asked temporarily forgetting the question that Hotchner had asked.

"Brain tumor." Hanna said as she slowly sat up. "The meds she's on now is for nothing more than pain or discomfort if she feels any."

"She's dying." It wasn't a question. Still, Hanna nodded her head.

"Yeah. She went in for surgery several months ago and once the doctors had a nice hole opened up they realised that there was nothing that they could do. So they patched her up and sent her home to die. They told me that her mind would go through different phases, then her body would either shut down or she'd just go from an aneurysm. They said that the pills would cut down on her pain and keep her comfortable."

"Sorry. We should have realised that something was-"

"Hush." Hanna snapped as her mother came back into the room with several pill bottols in one hand and a cup of water and handed the pills to Hanna who popped the tops off. And quickly handed her mother three pink pills and one white then put the lids back on the bottles as Helen took her medicine.

Helen popped the pills and then downed her drink and set her glass aside as she swallowed then asked, "Can I visit some more now?"

"You can visit with the nice men a bit longer but after that they have to go back to work, okay."

"Okay!"

"Fantastic-" Hanna said as she started to stand up and would have fallen if not for one of the men, the one with the mocha colored skin, jumping up to help steady her. "I-I need to get some asprin. My head is killing me." Hanna said in a pained tone as everythign faded in and out for a moment.

"Maybe you should sit back down." The man holding her up said in a concerned tone.

"No. I just need some asprin-" The world was spinning now, Hanna noted in wry humor. It had been a while since she had had a concussion but apparently she had suffered more than she had initally thought upon waking since she suddenly felt sick. "And maybe a plastic bag..."

"You going to be sick?" The guy asked. Hanna wanted to answer him but before she could so much as warn him she threw up on his feet.


	5. Chapter 5

"Uh..." Derek said as he finished cleaning off the last of Hanna's puke as she finally lifted her head from the toilet and made an 'Ugh' sound herself before muttering a lame sounding,

"Sorry." From her place on the floor next to him.

Derek looked down at her and was awe struck by how much she looked like Garcia the last time she'd been sick with the flu. The pieces that had been nagging at his mind fell into place and he was now absolutely sure that Hanna had some sort of blood link to Garcia.

A damn close blood link too. Which begged the question; What the hell had happened? And why had Garcia lied to him and the rest of the team? Had she even known? He wondered as he grabbed a wash rag from a shelf off to his right and wet it then wrung it out and handed it to her.

Hanna gave him a grateful look and took the rag from him and used it to pat down her face as she sat back against the porcelain bathtub and sighed before asking in a hesitant tone, "Did you manage to get it all off?"

Derek looked down at his pants legs and his shoes with a critical eye before saying, "Yeah, I think so. How are you feeling?"

"Better...now that there isn't anything in my stomach." Hanna said half jokingly, making Derek's lips twitch slightly in amusement before he mentally squashed any feelings of amusment that she had stirred in him. He couldn't afford to get distracted. Not now. Not when Garcia was dead. And this girl was somehow tied to her, or may even know what had happened to her.

Perhaps she had even witnessed something or held something that Garcia had given to her.

It was certainly something to ask her about. But how? Hanna was a sharp girl, she might catch on to any line of questioning that doesn't appear innocent. "So uh...tell me something, how long have you lived with Helen?"

"A while."

"A while? That's not much of a straight answer."

"It's the only one you'll get regarding my adopted mother." Hanna said, effectively shutting down that line of questioning. Leaving Derek with a few other ideas on how to proceed.

"Okay, I can respect that-" Derek said as he put the lid down on the toilet and sat down. "Let's try this, do you know anything about your biological family?"

"No."

"No?" He said in disbelief as he raised a brow at her. _Damn she's good._ He thought as he said, "Now why don't I believe that?"

"Dunno. Maybe because it's you're job to be suspicious." Hanna said as she quickly got to her feet and staggered a bit as a wave of dizziness washed over her. Derek reached out and grasped her upper arms to keep her from falling as he said,

"Whoa there sweetheart. Maybe you should have stayed seated." Steering her over to sit on the bathtub rim.

"Why did you call me that?" Hanna asked with a small frown as he slowly removed his hands from her arms once she was balanced enough to sit without his support.

"Call you what?" Derek asked curiously. Not realising that he had called her 'sweetheart' just a moment ago.

"You called me sweetheart." Hanna said almost accusingly, unsure of how to react to being called sweetheart by this strange, enthralling man. Derek blinked at her and seemed to mentally pull back into himself a bit. Had he? Had he really? Or was she just playing with him? He wanted to know, desperately. Yet the second he opened his mouth to speak, the bathroom door opened and Reed peeked in with a slightly anxious look.

"Derek, Hodge says it's time to go. Helen is starting to wear down." Derek closed his mouth and nodded, his eyes never leaving Hanna's face. That was fine with him since he had some news to share with the team about Hanna's blood ties to Garcia.


	6. Chapter 6

**Dude- I know that it's been a while, but I am trying. Seriously... You try puking up a quart of blood and going to the hospital every so often for little more than a year. And you'd get behind on stuff too.**

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Morgan said nothing about his suspicions about Hanna to the team. If he had they would have dug into Garcia's background and staked out the girl and her mother. Either that or they would have tried to deliberately confronted her, which would have been a bad, bad, bad idea. Especially if she knew something about _why_ Garcia had died. So instead the moment he got back to the office, he'd gone straight to Garcia's little office and he'd sat there for the better part of the day emotionally waffling back and forth between shock, despair, and hope.

Shock at Garcia's death. Despair that he would never see his baby girl again.

And hope... Hope that he was one hundred and ten percent absolutely right about Hanna. No that wasn't exactly right. Discovering Hanna's existence was quickly becoming an obsession to him. And goddamn it he wanted to know more. No- he _needed_ to know more. More about the girl. More about her life. More about why Garcia had lied about losing her entire family when she was eighteen...

Had Hanna been a byproduct of an assault? Frankly Morgan couldn't see Garcia- even who she had been before becoming friends with him and starting work at the BAU- as someone who would hate an innocent child for something that wasn't it's fault. Nor could he imagine Garcia taking something like an assault lying down. No- the woman he'd come to know would have used every skill she possessed as a hacker to hunt down the dirty son of a bitch who had hurt her and gotten her knocked up and then she would have slowly destroyed him.

So assault was out.

Which meant that Hanna's existence really could have been an accident. Possibly from one of Garcia's old, old, old boyfriends. Or maybe from a one night stand.

She could have found out, tried to tell the guy- been blown off... Derek's mind shut down almost automatically for a moment as he felt himself getting pissed. Oh if some shit headed punk had blown off his baby girl after knocking her up- he wanted the bastards name. Frankly from where he was sitting, if that was indeed the case, the someone deserved a much needed and long overdue beat down. As well as the privilege of having Morgan serve him the paper work that came with court ordered child support.

Hanna was what now? Nineteen? Twenty? Twenty two-ish at the most.

Well, he could conveniently leave out her age when he handed over the papers for child support. It could be his great big 'fuck you' slash 'suck my dick' on behalf of his dearly departed girl. Yeah. That could work.

Until then, he would just hang out and-

One of Garcia's main computer screens suddenly started blinking, drawing his attention away from those pesky nagging thoughts eating away at him as a small chat box opened automatically on the screen and the words, **_The boogyman's vendetta is a fierce and terrible thing. _**

Frowning at the words, he leaned forward and typed. _**Hanna?** _Wondering if maybe Garcia had taught the girl a thing or two about hacking specific systems. And if maybe this was her way of trying to tell someone what had happened to her mother.

The screen remained blank for a moment or so before the words, **_The Black Queen's loss was great. You and you're friends have my sympathy._**And then a small message at the bottom of the screen appeared indicating that the other had logged off their computer, Morgan read the words and sighed in frustration. Dammit. He was in no mood for games.

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Hanna logged off her computer and sighed tiredly as she sat back in her chair. Whoever had been on her mother's computer was putting two and two together. She had expected someone would. But she had hoped that she would at least have some time to sort things out first. But unfortunately the death of her mother had done quite a bit of damage not just to the BAU but to the online communities as well.

The people her mother hadn't spoken to in almost ten years since joining the BAU were coming out of the woodworks. Demanding to know what had happened to their beloved Black Queen.

And as the long lost Queen's heir apparent- it was time for Hanna to step up and begin the work her mother had left behind. God only knew that if she didn't more people (possibly her adopted mother or even Garcia's friends from work) may become the next targets if she didn't.


	7. Chapter 7

Derek didn't sleep that night. Not really. He was too wound up. And of course it didn't help that every time he tried to doze off he kept seeing Garcia being zipped up inside of a body bag. And so with those disturbing images in mind he just spent a better part of the night wide awake, and watching the clock on the far wall of his living room. The one hanging above his flat screen plasma TV.

The one that Garcia had given him two years ago for Christmas after he'd broken the last one while trying to change the batteries out of it.

And finally after what seemed like forever, he started to both see and feel the soft stream of sunlight filtering through his living room curtains. Coloring his walls in rainbow hues while warming the back of his neck. He waited another two or three hours before he bothered to pick up the phone and call in. He didn't particularly feel like going into work today anyways.

Not when he had so many other things on his mind.

So after that was done, he got up from his couch and began to move around a little while mentally going over what he was planning to do. He knew it was crazy and sort of creepy too. And it was against everything that he practically stood for as an FBI agent- but he wanted to follow Hanna around a bit and observe her. Maybe see if she somehow knew something about her mother's death. Or maybe met with anyone during the day when she thought no one was watching her, who might.

It was a fair enough thing, He reasoned with himself. After all it wasn't like he intended to follow her around and observe her movements forever. That was stalking. And it was against the law. No- just for a couple of days or so would do. Or at least until he went back to work where he could see if any new computer messages were posted.

A few minutes later, after having himself a nice shower and getting dressed. Derek had his keys, wallet and a plastic coffee cup in his hands and was out the door. He had a long day ahead of him and it was best to start early.

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Hanna's alarm went off at nine fifty two am. Forcing her from her nice comfy place on the floor of her bedroom where she had fallen asleep late last night after establishing a few connections that her mother had used back in her hacker days, before then getting off of the computer. After which she had spent several hours pouring over case files that her mother had kept copies of in her home and sometimes let her go over.

Cold cases and the like. Cases of serial killers running rampant and murdering in specific ways with specific weapons of choice. Kills of opportunity and so on. And after spending so much time staring at the pictures of their victims that she felt as if she'd always see the images of their dead faces burned into her memory- she had switched over to child molesters and kidnappers for a little bit.

Men and women who had stalked their intended victims until they had all but run them to ground like they were wild animals.

God, before she'd met her mother for the first time she'd only been aware of a few of these things and now- now she knew that there was such a thing as monsters. And she didn't like it. Not in the least. Why just ten of the people in some of the files she held alone were former convicts who lived within just seven blocks of her home! It was terrifying when she really got to thinking about it.

Sighing, she pushed herself to her feet using her bed as a crutch and silently moved towards the bathroom to shower and get ready to leave for the day. Prep time took no more than thirty minutes since she wasn't the type of gal to primp for hours just to make herself late for just any little thing.

No- once she was done showering and drying off, she brushed her hair- put it in her hair clip then went back out into her room and quickly dressed in a black lace pair of panties and a matching bra. Then grabbed an elbow length maroon colored shirt. Pulling on an emerald knit sweater over her other shirt, she then grabbed a pair of faded jeans and then slipped on her shoes and left her room to go give her mother her medicine and make sure that she had something to eat before she left.

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Derek was parked just down the street a little from Hanna's home at ten fifteen.

Right about the same exact time he saw the front door open and a disheveled looking Helen step outside in a fuzzy white bathrobe and pink bunny slippers a mere second or two before Hanna came charging out the door and grasped her sick mother gently by the shoulders and carefully maneuvered her back inside the house while speaking to her in a soft tone.

Ten minutes or so later, the front door opened again and Hanna stepped back outside and shut the door behind her and put her house key (which was attached to a thin leather chord) around her neck and looked around for a second. As if checking to make sure no one was around, which struck him as more than a little suspicious, and then started walking.

Curious to see where she was going, Derek put his skills as an field agent to good use and started up his car and began to follow her at a discreet distance. He followed her about a mile before she finally stopped walking and just stood on the curb and seemed as if she were waiting for something.

He parked his car again, and this time got out so that he could get a closer look at what she was up too. Leaning his back against the nearest building, he stood there with his arms and ankles crossed, his sunglasses on, his attention totally focused on the girl just a few feet away. She seemed utterly unaware of his presence for the few minutes or so that she stood there, looking around, awkwardly smiling at random people who passed her by and gave her strange looks.

Then finally something happened that truly made Derek's heart almost stop. A guy in a grey hoodie with a skull on it walked up behind Hanna and pulled what looked like a gun out of one of his pockets and pressed it against her back right between her shoulder blades, and slowly- ever so slowly started to pull the trigger.


End file.
